


Blind Bird

by bluebeholder



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Mag Survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mag survives her fall, and subsequently falls into strange company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind Bird

When Mag awoke, she could see nothing at all. She was lying upon something rough but soft, covered in a blanket, with a pillow beneath her head. She was no longer in her stage costume, but in a dress of more usual fit. A bandage was wrapped around her eyes. The last thing she remembered—the last thing she remembered—

The rising of the blood-red curtain.

Blue light, so bright that she could not see the edge of the stage before her loaned eyes.

_Chromaggia…_

_Mia colpa, mia colpa…_

_I would rather be blind!_

And the pain, the fall, the darkness and the silence and the blessed peace.

Now she was awake.

And she suddenly knew that she was not alone.

“Who’s there?” she asked, and tried to keep the tremble from her voice.

“So the blind bird sings,” a deep voice, an unfamiliar voice, a baritone voice said from somewhere to her left. “So the voice remains after all.”

Mag fumbled about and tried to sit up, but a large hand pushed her back down. Probably wise, all things considered. It had been more than seventeen years since she had last been blind, and she could not entirely remember all her old reflexes. If she got up, she would probably topple. “Who are you?”

“A friend,” the voice said. 

“How did I survive?” Mag asked. Surprisingly, she was unafraid. Perhaps choosing to gouge out her own eyes on stage had lent her some courage after all. What could be worse in this world than what she had done to herself?

The voice seemed amused. “Oh, the miracles of medicine,” it said. “I forgot you’d slept through it all. Would you like some exposition?”

Mag nodded slowly. 

“Well, it started with your suicide. The whole thing like any good opera—with the cast dead on the floor and the poor little ingénue walking free out the door. They threw the bodies in a mass grave, and I couldn’t miss out on the chance. It’s my job—a thankless job, but someone has to do it,” the voice said with a wry lilt. It continued. “Digging through the corpses, I found that you were somehow still alive. So I filled you up with Zydrate and took you to a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Mag asked, clutching at the blankets.

“To a doctor, a very good surgeon I happen to know. He does good work and his prices are low. He patched up your body and put back your voice, but I’m sorry to say that he couldn’t fix your eyes.”

Mag laughed bitterly. “Didn’t you see the opera that night? I told you all that I’d rather be blind.”

“Well, it’s all for the best then. You’re happy and you’re alive.” the voice said. It paused, then said quietly, “It’s not often that I find a living thing among the bodies and bones down here.”

“I wonder why,” Mag said. She tried to roll her eyes and—well, that didn’t work. “You still haven’t answered my question: who’s there?”

The voice laughed. It was a hard, bitter thing, a tenor with which Mag was all too familiar. “A man of the streets, a grave robber, a drug dealer.”

“Who are you?” Mag asked, half-desperate. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll run.”

“You’ll run, blind bird?” the man asked, sounding amused. “You wouldn’t get five feet from me.”

“If you won’t tell me, let me see you,” Mag commanded. She held up her hand, waiting. Here was hoping that this skill hadn’t deserted her entirely, too.

A large hand wrapped around her wrist, surprisingly gentle, and brought her hand to a face. Mag felt around it. It was well-proportioned, pleasing to the touch—though whose face wasn’t, in this day and age? Just to make sure, she felt around the edges of the face, searching for the scar of a replacement. But there was nothing, just skin. 

She withdrew her hand, striving to sit up and look as imperious as she was used to being. “You never had surgery.”

“No knife addiction,” the man said. 

“No knife addiction,” Mag murmured, folding her hands in her lap. She turned her head in the direction of the man. “So why did you want me, grave robber? Why bind up the broken bird’s wings?”

The man’s chair creaked as he moved. “You don’t belong to them anymore, with your contract burned and the castle knocked down.”

Mag cocked her head. “Still, I must ask you. Why do you care?”

“The pleasures we have are fleeting in life. In a vial, in a brothel, under the knife. I find my pleasure down here among the dead, but the dead can’t speak. So for years and years I’ve hidden down here. There are drugs in my hands and knives at my throat, and the only voice I can ever trust is your voice.”

“My voice?” Mag’s hand flew to her throat.

“Your voice!” the man cried. “Designer bodies and edited genes, what’s left to trust? A voice that’s never been censored, like yours, blind bird!”

Mag shook her head. “I was the voice of GeneCo! They only ever shut me up!”

“Not at the opera,” the man said, suddenly soft. The cot dipped sharply and Mag snatched at the wall—slimy, dripping stone—to steady herself and stop herself sliding as the man sat beside her. “You sang what you wanted.”

“I sang what I wanted,” Mag admitted. “But only at the opera.”

“You sang at the opera.” There was a large hand on her knee. It wasn’t like Rotti’s disgusting wandering hands, so Mag allowed it and didn’t stab him with the false nails she was still wearing. 

“I sang at the opera,” she said, and sighed. A fleeting vision of the stage, the adoring crowd, flashed through her head. “When the curtain rose, I sang what I wanted when I sang at the opera.”

The man was close enough that Mag could smell him, all dirt and clean rot and the sickly-sweet of Zydrate. “You’re free out here. You can sing what you want whenever you please.”

“Help me up,” Mag said. “Take me outside. Let me feel what I can no longer see.”

He helped her up, half-carrying her in the unfamiliar room. She felt no pain from the surgery, but she was sure that she would be feeling it soon enough. A door opened before her, and she stepped out into the cold night air. She could hear sirens in the distance. “They’re rioting,” the man said. “Without you to give them hope, everything just…disappeared. Soon enough it’ll all be bones.”

“A good thing I didn’t die at the opera,” she muttered. “I can join all the rest when the city falls.”

“Then sing,” he said. “Sing while you can.”

For a moment, Mag paused. Lines of music flitted through her head, already vague and half-forgotten. Why should she sing? There was no point, not without an audience to hear her. But what did she really care, anyway? It wasn’t like she’d sold her voice to GeneCo. Their audiences didn’t have to hear her sing. Her voice belonged only and always to her.

She drew a deep breath. Lucky that she was full of Zydrate, or it would have hurt. She clearly recalled the iron spikes driving through her lungs. But it felt ordinary, normal, just as if she were on stage at the opera. “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,” she began, closing her eyes behind the bandage, imagining the glorious red curtains. The stage spread out before her, a rapt audience just beyond the lights, hanging from her every word, adoring her and her alone. “Non feci mai male ad anima viva! Con man furtive quante miserie conobbi aiutai…”

There was nothing more to say. She simply leaned against the grave robber’s arm and listened to the silence around them, and the distant sound of the riots. 

“Where will you go, blind bird?” he asked after a while, as the sirens faded and died away. “Where do you go when the world falls apart?”

“I don’t know,” Mag said. “Where do you go when the world is dead?”

He laughed. “I go down to the graves and catacombs, where the streets are paved in bodies and bones, and I collect the quick clean miracle cure.”

“Zydrate’s the only thing that’s pure.” Mag could practically taste it on him. She supposed that now she smelled like it, too. 

“Precisely, my lost feathered friend.” His hair brushed against her face when he moved. “So who will you be, down here on the streets?”

Mag shrugged. “The only thing I have is my voice.”

“Your voice?”

“My voice,” she said. “And I won’t be loaning that away.”

His voice was light, but deadly serious. “If you’re going to live you have to pay. Why won’t you give your voice away?”

“It’s mine,” Mag snapped. “My voice! My art! I’ll sell my body, I’ll sell my organs, but they will never take my voice from me!”

“Blind bird,” the man said, “be calm. You’re free.”

She shook her head. “What does it matter?” she said wearily. “Where did freedom get Rotti or Shiloh or Marni?”

“It gets you nowhere,” the man said, “except that when you’re free you breathe as you please and speak as you please and sing as you please and no one comes to take it away from you.”

“Who’s free in this world?” Mag asked. 

The man shrugged. “I am.”

“You are?”

“I am,” he said. “My body isn’t on loan, so I don’t fear the Repo Man. I do as I please and think as I please and I sing as I please.”

An idea struck Mag. She turned and grasped at his coat, tilting her face up as if she were looking at him. “Take me with you,” she said. “Down to the catacombs, down to the tombs. Take me with you.”

“Why should I, blind bird?” he asked, large hands settling on her shoulders.

“Because we can both sing,” she said. “Two voices are stronger than one.”

He sounded like he was smiling, Mag thought. “Let the world fall down around us.”

She held out her hand. He took it, and helped her down the steps and into the street. The only thing she cared about was that wherever they were going needed to have good acoustics. The grave robber’s voice was divine, and she would love to hear it better.

The only sound as they walked was their footsteps ringing on the pavement. “Sing with me, Mag,” he said. 

She smiled, and let the music begin.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk about a fandom I never expected to write for! Saw the movie last week and it has crawled into my head and taken up a permanent residence there. 
> 
> This fic was actually written as a gift for a friend, the one who got me into the fandom. She told me that she'd always thought that Blind Mag and the Graverobber would sing fantastically together, and was sad that they never did in the film. So I did what I could to fix that.
> 
> The aria Mag sings is "Vissi D'Arte" from _Tosca._ It is a truly gorgeous aria and you should definitely listen to it. The English translation of the lyrics Mag sings is as follows:
> 
> "I lived for my art, I lived for love,  
> I never did harm to a living soul!  
> With a secret hand  
> I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of..."


End file.
